


little burns

by losebetter



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Character Study, Established Relationship, M/M, i honestly have no idea what else to tag this as., retribution. recovery. little things.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 06:08:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5817070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/losebetter/pseuds/losebetter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Stay safe, okay?” MacCready offers. And then, as though pulled straight from his memories: “You’ll get there.” He barely knows what it means, but something about it feels right, and he dismisses himself with an awkward nod before he starts down the road again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	little burns

**Author's Note:**

> so, i have a lot of feelings about maccready's potential for character growth, and banged this out in a day. i____i the sole survivor here is rook - he's got a messy, meandering, mildly nsfw tag on my tumblr blog [right here](http://losebetter.tumblr.com/tagged/ss%3A-rook), though for quick reference he looks a bit like [this](http://41.media.tumblr.com/8e173775af607d8e8d3f81d7df8dd203/tumblr_o0fb2rrwkx1uopznto1_1280.png), and stumbles through being too nice for his own good, usually.
> 
> with love to [asexualshepard](http://asexualshepard.tumblr.com/)/[summerparamour](http://archiveofourown.org/users/summerparamour) for encouraging me through this nonsense! her tolerance for my overbearing fallout feelings is unmatched, probably.

They’re maybe four miles outside of Covenant when it happens - they pass a straggler, huddled up against a dilapidated wall to hide from the tepid winds that signal an oncoming winter night, their hood pulled over their head. MacCready has taken point and he fingers his submachine gun, just in case, but lets it be when the person looks at up at him, pale skin and steely eyes.

He doesn’t know what makes him stop, this time - hears the muted clack of Rook’s heels stop as well but doesn’t turn around - only that he does, veers slowly off the road to approach the stooped figure. 

She - as he realizes, once he gets closer - flinches away from him at first, even though he’s still a few fair feet away. MacCready feels the cool spark of a memory, then, one that his body remembers, and knows suddenly that she’d probably seen him reach for his gun, had probably made a precise count of his weaponry the second he’d been in her sight.

MacCready raises his hands, palms out. His steps slow, his last one breaking through a little icecap between blades of dead grass. “It’s alright,” he assures, though he knows she won’t believe him (and why should she when they both know it isn’t true, that very few things will ever be alright again?) - and it feels a little more like ‘hello,’ anyway.

He moves deliberately, eyes on her, as he lowers his messenger bag (Rook’s idea, and admittedly a smart one, good for keeping valuables close on longer trips and being able to leave behind their larger packs on short ones) and starts to pick calmly through it with cool fingers. Fingers that he knows can afford to be chilly, even in this weather, because they won’t be when he goes to sleep - not when he’ll have access to a fur and Rook’s own, larger hands if the first thing doesn’t get the job done.

MacCready blinks, regrets mildly that his own gloves are fingerless. He could’ve given her gloves if he’d thought of it.

He keeps digging through his pack anyway, until he comes across the warm cloth bundle he’d been looking for, weighing it where she can’t see it, just for a moment.

(“I’m hoping we can make the treeline by tonight,” Rook says, and MacCready is distracted by how he stretches, by the unabashed length of him when he reaches up. He meets MacCready’s eyes again, and smiles. “It’ll be a good place to camp and not get seen, even if means we won’t have a fire.”

He inclines his head toward their cooking fire, just enough of a flame with the remains of last night’s wood run for MacCready to be working. There are two tatos nestled in the coals, wrapped in foil, and he’s got two little makeshift spears of mirelurk meat balanced carefully in the dirt beside the pit. Quick-rise dough warms on a metal plate he’d foisted from an abandoned house, now rigged to rest just where the fire flicks out at the sky before it evaporates.

“If we save the foil, we can wrap all that up and it should still have a little heat left in it by the time we make camp,” Rook explains, and MacCready nods. It’s a good idea, and the day’s sun is making him weirdly relaxed about the idea of not having a fire to warm his feet at night. “Plus if we get to the treeline by tonight, we can be out the other side of it in a day and settled in actual buildings tomorrow night, like civilized people.”

MacCready rolls his eyes, giving the meat a turn to cook it evenly. “Please. You wouldn’t know civilized if it bit you,” he says, and Rook laughs.)

He knows exactly what’s in his hand now, and can still feel the residual warmth through the foil and the remnant of a dirty tee shirt that he’d wrapped it in. He thinks about his plan for the rest of the night, how hungry he’s going to be without proper food, but only hesitates for a second more before lifting the bundle out of his bag and holding it gingerly forward.

The woman eyes him, suspicious, but MacCready doesn’t quail. “You can have it,” he says. “It’s safe, I was going to eat it.” She cautiously holds out both hands, and MacCready sets the food into them. His heart aches when he sees her frostbitten fingers curling greedily around the sudden heat. “It’s a sort of, uh, meat bun,” he explains, unnecessarily. “And a baked tato. Nothing fancy, but it’ll fill you up and keep you warm enough. You have water?”

She nods - still silent, though her wide eyes speak volumes that MacCready isn’t sure he wants to think about. He closes his pack and resettles it, standing up from his crouch.

“Stay safe, okay?” he offers. And then, as though pulled straight from his memories: “You’ll get there.” He barely knows what it means, but something about it feels right, and he dismisses himself with an awkward nod before he starts down the road again.

Rook’s sharp heels are right behind him, the pleasant clap of cork and leather on pressed gravel. His pace is leisurely, but MacCready can sense him bursting with - something, pride or excitement.

“You’re really a good person, aren’t you,” he says, once he falls into step with MacCready, and the grin on his face is exactly the one MacCready had imagined, to such a degree that it makes him smile.

_Don’t go spreading it around_ , he thinks, like a villain in an old movie.

_You’re rubbing off on me_ , he thinks, and Rook’s voice in his head provides, _I can be, babe, was that a request?_

“Good people don’t shoot other people for a living,” is what he says.

Rook shrugs his broad shoulders, as though this is debatable. He blows a bubble with his gum and then snaps it back behind his lips - it doesn’t get in his beard, and MacCready is weirdly impressed.

“Evil people don’t give away their dinner to strangers on the street,” Rook counters.

It makes MacCready uneasy, almost - there’s an almost hopeful turn in his stomach, a fear he hadn’t realized he’d had being gently quelled by Rook’s quiet logic.

“So I’m - somewhere in-between the two?” he hedges, and Rook wraps his arm around his narrow shoulders, pulling him in against his side as they walk. It’s clumsy to travel this way, but MacCready tips his head back against the leather sleeve of Rook’s coat, comforted.

“As we all are, I think,” Rook agrees. And then, “I’ll share my dinner with you, by the way. I’m not that evil.”

“Watch your back,” MacCready teases. “Might just steal it for myself. Gotta counterbalance all this positive energy somehow.” It takes Rook’s charmed laugh for him to realize that he’d been honestly kidding about it, that it had been a joke after all. 

Something about Rook - his steady warmth wrapped snugly around MacCready’s body an appropriate reminder - grounds him, lets him breathe. He remembers when he would’ve held onto a bundle of warm food as if his life had been on the line (and, to be fair, it might have been) - scratching and biting at anyone who might’ve tried to take it away from him, uncaring of who he’d hurt.

Those days aren’t far behind him, he knows with the same grim certainty of anyone who knows their own demons. (He knows what he has to atone for, keeps the checks and balances close to his heart - too close, some days.) But it’s hard to imagine them in his future, harder still when he feels Rook’s warm lips close against his temple, upsetting his hat with a cheeky kiss.

He’d truly forgotten what it had felt like to depend on another person - his memories pop back up, fond but vague - but he thinks that it had probably felt a little like this does.

**Author's Note:**

> [i'm on the tumblr machine](losebetter.tumblr.com), if you wanna say hi! o/


End file.
